1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to mobile web browsing. More specifically, the present invention relates to providing optimized content to a mobile communications device.
2. Background of the Invention
Today there are many ways to access the internet and it can be done from practically anywhere. It may have been built for computers, but the internet can be accessed from a multitude of electronic devices including laptop computers, cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc.
At the same time cellular telephones alone have become tremendously popular. It is estimated that at the end of 2007 the total worldwide subscriber rate reached 3.3 billion. Close to 80% of the world's population enjoys mobile telephone coverage, a figure that will only increase. As cellular telephones gain popularity, their functionality has increased also. Standard service includes voice calling, caller ID, call waiting, and voice mail. Service providers also offer text messaging, push mail, navigation, and even a high-speed internet connection directly to your telephone through the use of protocols such as those included in High Speed Packet Access (HSPA).
However, wireless access usually has limited bandwidth. At the same time traditional HTML-based web-pages usually have high bandwidth demand. People frequently complain about the slow access speed from wireless handheld devices, such as the recent release of IPHONE and soon expected GOOGLE Phone API (ANDROID). Wireless networks are improving in speed and bandwidth, but a mobile device itself can reduce the connection speed if its hardware cannot keep up with the data flow. This may not be as much of a problem for laptop computers and IPHONEs, but there are many other mobile communications devices that don't contain the fastest hardware.
To access Internet content, wireless handheld devices have four options at this time. The first option, accessing regular websites, is the simplest method, but this usually involves a large volume of data transmission. The second option is accessing through a wireless application protocol (WAP), which usually requires service providers to provide a proxy server to convert regular web-pages into a mobile version and provide service to wireless handheld devices. With this option, the service provider, rather than the owner of the site, is converting the site. The third option is direct access through mobile sites which are customized by the owner to provide content services to wireless devices. Yet another option exists for directly accessing closed network, or “walled garden”, services. These services are set up by the service provider and only accessible by the service provider's customers.
Of all these options for accessing the same content in a website, users have a hard time selecting which one is best for them. There are many different mobile communications devices with different screen sizes, resolutions, input options, software capabilities, etc. Mobile communications devices may run on many different operating systems including WINDOWS MOBILE, SYMBIAN OS, PALM OS, etc. These operating systems do not support all the same types of application environments. For example some are best suited for JAVA applications while others are geared towards data processing. The web browsers associated with different mobile communications devices also have vastly different capabilities. Many devices are able to run JAVASCRIPT within a website, but FLASH content is scarcely supported on mobile communications devices.
Users of these devices have their own ideas about how content should be presented to them. Some users want their data fast, and do not care how pretty it looks. Other users would like as much information as possible, yet would sacrifice aesthetics for speed. Then there are users who just want a nice internet experience, with nice graphics and layout, and minimum content is satisfactory. Not all of these users choose their mobile communications device wisely, however, and so some users struggle to find the right version of the website they want to visit. The optimal website needs to have balance between the speed of the connection, the capability of the device, and the wants and needs of the user.
What is needed in the art is a content access policy manager that considers the mobile communications device hardware, network speed, and user preferences, and delivers the optimal website based on those considerations.